Kev Quirk

Menu

Dreamhost – The Worst Web Host I’ve Ever Used

I’m sure most of the people reading this post will know that I run a pretty popular blog, RefuGeeks. It’s really great that RefuGeeks is growing in popularity, but the side-effect to that is that I’m having to pay more and more, for better hosting. Previously I was on a 2GB Linode VPS (they’re awesome by the way), but my server was constantly having to be tweaked and optimised in order to cope with the load. So, I had to move…

All the work that I was doing behind the scenes on the RefuGeeks server, was really starting to frustrate me, and distract me from my true love – writing. So I decided to go with a managed WordPress installation from DreamHost – a service called DreamPress.

Reading through the information listed on the DreamPress website, I felt assured that these guys would take away all of my headaches. But, oh, how wrong one person could be!

I would never recommend Dramhost to anyone – and if you’re with them I’d leave NOW!

What is DreamPress? That’s a good question! Think of WordPress. You got it? Cool. Now, think of that WordPress install, but on steroids! Picture it running on a specialized, optimized, virtual private server. Yeah, this is far from your average WordPress hosting package, isn’t it? DreamPress comes pre-configured by our in-house WordPress experts for maximum security and performance under traffic load. This is our call-out to all entrepreneurs, website designers, developers, and bloggers to give it a test-drive today!

So, I answered this call-out that DreamHost were touting, and it was a disaster from the very start. Let’s start from the beginning, I’m going to do this as a bullet list, as there’s a lot to get through here…

So now I’m at the point where I’m around a week into using the DreamPress service, I’ve had a couple of issues, and both times they could have been handled in a much better way by the support team. But now came the straw that broke the camels back. This was the real deal breaker for me…

What now?

Well, I’m back on Linode, there’s still a lot of work to do, but once it’s all setup I will be running two servers within Linode, one for the web server, and one for database and caching. It’s a much more expensive solution tham DreamHost, but you get what you pay for. I’m currently running on one Linode, and stability is already way better than that of DreamPress. At the moment, the performance isn’t as good as that of DreamPress, but it will be once I’m finished setting it all up.

I’m not usually one for moaning, or telling people what they should, and shouldn’t do. However, having worked in IT support myself for nearly a decade, I found it absolutely astonishing just how bad DreamHost support were (with the exception of the WordPress engineers I spoke with). I’m sure they have many happy customers, but why risk it if they can treat a new customer so badly, on so many separate occasions?

Do you have a DreamHost horror story? Please feel free to it below. Also, don’t forget to share this post on you social networks. It’s important to let people know what they’re letting themselves in for – you never know, DreamHost may actually improve their service. I don’t care though, I’ll be sticking with Linode.

Dreamhost – yeah right! More like Nightmarehost!

← The one before
I’m Writing for MakeUseOf

Up next →
Decisions Decisions…